SoroushVahidi/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Mapping the Americanization of English in space and time
(2018)

As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, so did the capacity to culturally influence the rest of the world. In this work, we analyze how the world-wide varieties of written English are evolving. We study both the spatial and temporal variations of vocabulary and spelling of English using a large corpus of geolocated tweets and the Google Books datasets corresponding to books published in the US and the UK. The advantage of our approach is that we can address both standard written language (Google Books) and the more colloquial forms of microblogging messages (Twitter). We find that American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders. Finally, we analyze how this trend has evolved over time and the impact that some cultural events have had in shaping it.
Glial and neuronal control of brain blood flow
(2010)

Blood flow in the brain is regulated by neurons and astrocytes. Knowledge of how these cells control blood flow is crucial for understanding how neural computation is powered, for interpreting functional imaging scans of brains, and for developing treatments for neurological disorders. It is now recognized that neurotransmitter-mediated signalling has a key role in regulating cerebral blood flow, that much of this control is mediated by astrocytes, that oxygen modulates blood flow regulation, and that blood flow may be controlled by capillaries as well as by arterioles. These conceptual shifts in our understanding of cerebral blood flow control have important implications for the development of new therapeutic approaches.
Investigating Players' Engagement, Immersion, and Experiences in Playing Pokémon Go
(2017)

In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) based mobile games have become popular among players. The Pokémon Go is one of the well-known examples. Although Pokémon Go game has become a global phenomenon, there is a limited study about players' experiences in the gameplay. Especially, little is known about players' engagement and immersion in playing AR-based mobile games in which physical movements in the real world are largely required to play the game. In this study, we conducted a pilot study with eight participants to investigate players' engagement, immersion, and experiences in the Pokémon Go gameplay. We report and discuss the preliminary findings from the study, which can help game designers understand players' experiences in the gameplay so that they can design more creative AR games in the future. Furthermore, the findings are also useful for future studies with larger sample size.
Advances on Interactive Machine Learning
(2018)

Interactive Machine Learning (IML) is an iterative learning process that tightly couples a human with a machine learner, which is widely used by researchers and practitioners to effectively solve a wide variety of real-world application problems. Although recent years have witnessed the proliferation of IML in the field of visual analytics, most recent surveys either focus on a specific area of IML or aim to summarize a visualization field that is too generic for IML. In this paper, we systematically review the recent literature on IML and classify them into a task-oriented taxonomy built by us. We conclude the survey with a discussion of open challenges and research opportunities that we believe are inspiring for future work in IML.
Doubly Attentive Transformer Machine Translation
(2018)

In this paper a doubly attentive transformer machine translation model (DATNMT) is presented in which a doubly-attentive transformer decoder normally joins spatial visual features obtained via pretrained convolutional neural networks, conquering any gap between image captioning and translation. In this framework, the transformer decoder figures out how to take care of source-language words and parts of an image freely by methods for two separate attention components in an Enhanced Multi-Head Attention Layer of doubly attentive transformer, as it generates words in the target language. We find that the proposed model can effectively exploit not just the scarce multimodal machine translation data, but also large general-domain textonly machine translation corpora, or imagetext image captioning corpora. The experimental results show that the proposed doublyattentive transformer-decoder performs better than a single-decoder transformer model, and gives the state-of-the-art results in the EnglishGerman multimodal machine translation task.
High Performance Clustering Based on the Similarity Join
(2000)

A broad class of algorithms for knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) relies heavily on similarity queries, i.e. range queries or nearest neighbor queries, in multidimensional feature spaces. Many KDD algorithms perform a similarity query for each point stored in the database. This approach causes serious performance degenerations if the considered data set does not fit into main memory. Usual cache strategies such as LRU fail because the locality of KDD algorithms is typically not high enough. In this paper, we propose to replace repeated similarity queries by the similarity join, a database primitive prevalent in multimedia database systems. We present a schema to transform query intensive KDD algorithms into a representation using the similarity join as a basic operation without affecting the correctness of the result of the considered algorithm. In order to perform a comprehensive experimental evaluation of our approach, we apply the proposed transformation to the clustering algorithm DBSCAN and to the hierarchical cluster structure analysis method OPTICS. Our technique allows the application of any similarity join algorithm, which may be based on index structures or not. In our experiments, we use a similarity join algorithm based on a variant of the X-tree. The experiments yield substantial performance improvements of our technique over the original algorithms. The traditional techniques are outperformed by factors of up to 33 for the X-tree and 54 for the R*-tree.
Adding Gradient Noise Improves Learning for Very Deep Networks
(2017)

{ Adding Gradient Noise Improves Learning for Very Deep Networks. Arvind Neelakantan, Luke Vilnis, Quoc V. Le, Ilya Sutskever, Lukasz Kaiser, Karol Kurach, James Martens. International Conference on Learning Representations Workshop (ICLR WS), 2016 { Generating Sentences from a Continuous Space. Samuel Bowman, Luke Vilnis, Oriol Vinyals, Andrew Dai, Rafal Jozefowicz, Samy Bengio. International Conference on Learning Representations Workshop (ICLR WS), 2016 { Bethe Projections for Non-Local Inference. Luke Vilnis, David Belanger, Daniel Sheldon, Andrew McCallum. Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2015 { Learning Dynamic Feature Selection for Fast Sequential Prediction. Emma Strubell, Luke Vilnis, Kate Silverstein, Andrew McCallum. Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2015 { Word Representations via Gaussian Embedding. Luke Vilnis, Andrew McCallum. International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2015 { Generalized Eigenvectors for Large Multiclass Problems. Luke Vilnis, Nikos Karampatziakis, Paul Mineiro. Neural Information Processing Systems Workshop on Representation and Learning Methods for Complex Outputs (NIPS WS), 2014 { Training for Fast Sequential Prediction Using Dynamic Feature Selection. Emma Strubell, Luke Vilnis, Andrew McCallum. Neural Information Processing Systems Workshop on Modern Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NIPS WS), 2014
Natural language processing in mental health applications using non-clinical texts
(2017)

Natural language processing (NLP) techniques can be used to make inferences about peoples' mental states from what they write on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. These inferences can then be used to create online pathways to direct people to health information and assistance and also to generate personalized interventions. Regrettably, the computational methods used to collect, process and utilize online writing data, as well as the evaluations of these techniques, are still dispersed in the literature. This paper provides a taxonomy of data sources and techniques that have been used for mental health support and intervention. Specifically, we review how social media and other data sources have been used to detect emotions and identify people who may be in need of psychological assistance; the computational techniques used in labeling and diagnosis; and finally, we discuss ways to generate and personalize mental health interventions. The overarching aim of this scoping review is to highlight areas of research where NLP has been applied in the mental health literature and to help develop a common language that draws together the fields of mental health, human-computer interaction and NLP.
A review of the production of ethanol from softwood
(2002)

Ethanol produced from various lignocellulosic materials such as wood, agricultural and forest residues has the potential to be a valuable substitute for, or complement to, gasoline. One of the major resources in the Northern hemisphere is softwood. This paper reviews the current status of the technology for ethanol production from softwood, with focus on hemicellulose and cellulose hydrolysis, which is the major problem in the overall process. Other issues of importance, e.g. overall process configurations and process economics are also considered.
Autonomous Navigation and Mapping for Inspection of Penstocks and Tunnels With MAVs
(2017)

In this paper, we address the estimation, control, navigation and mapping problems to achieve autonomous inspection of penstocks and tunnels using aerial vehicles with on-board sensing and computation. Penstocks and tunnels have the shape of a generalized cylinder. They are generally dark and featureless. State estimation is challenging because range sensors do not yield adequate information and cameras do not work in the dark. We show that the six degrees of freedom (DOF) pose and velocity can be estimated by fusing information from an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a lidar and a set of cameras. This letter discusses in detail the range-based estimation part while leaving the details of vision component to our earlier work. The proposed algorithm relies only on a model of the generalized cylinder and is robust to changes in shape of the tunnel. The approach is validated through real experiments showing autonomous and shared control, state estimation and environment mapping in the penstock at Center Hill Dam, TN. To our knowledge, this is the first time autonomous navigation and mapping has been achieved in a penstock without any external infrastructure such GPS or external cameras.
Sensitivity and Generalization in Neural Networks: an Empirical Study
(2018)

In practice it is often found that large over-parameterized neural networks generalize better than their smaller counterparts, an observation that appears to conflict with classical notions of function complexity, which typically favor smaller models. In this work, we investigate this tension between complexity and generalization through an extensive empirical exploration of two natural metrics of complexity related to sensitivity to input perturbations. Our experiments survey thousands of models with various fully-connected architectures, optimizers, and other hyper-parameters, as well as four different image classification datasets. We find that trained neural networks are more robust to input perturbations in the vicinity of the training data manifold, as measured by the norm of the input-output Jacobian of the network, and that it correlates well with generalization. We further establish that factors associated with poor generalization – such as full-batch training or using random labels – correspond to lower robustness, while factors associated with good generalization – such as data augmentation and ReLU non-linearities – give rise to more robust functions. Finally, we demonstrate how the input-output Jacobian norm can be predictive of generalization at the level of individual test points.
Multi-scale Internet traffic forecasting using neural networks and time series methods
(2010)

This article presents three methods to forecast accurately the amount of traffic in TCP/IP based networks: a novel neural network ensemble approach and two important adapted time series methods (ARIMA and Holt-Winters). In order to assess their accuracy, several experiments were held using realworld data from two large Internet service providers. In addition, different time scales (five minutes, one hour and one day) and distinct forecasting lookaheads were analyzed. The experiments with the neural ensemble achieved the best results for five minutes and hourly data, while the Holt-Winters is the best option for the daily forecasts. This research opens possibilities for the development of more efficient traffic engineering and anomaly detection tools, which will result in financial gains from better network resource management.
Regional coherence changes in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease: A combined structural and resting-state functional MRI study
(2007)

Recent functional imaging studies have indicated that the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be associated with the changes in spontaneous low-frequency (<0.08 Hz) blood oxygenation level-dependent fluctuations (LFBF) measured during a resting state. The purpose of this study was to examine regional LFBF coherence patterns in early AD and the impact of regional brain atrophy on the functional results. Both structural MRI and resting-state functional MRI scans were collected from 14 AD subjects and 14 age-matched normal controls. We found significant regional coherence decreases in the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC/PCu) in the AD patients when compared with the normal controls. Moreover, the decrease in the PCC/PCu coherence was correlated with the disease progression measured by the Mini-Mental State Exam scores. The changes in LFBF in the PCC/PCu may be related to the resting hypometabolism in this region commonly detected in previous positron emission tomography studies of early AD. When the regional PCC/PCu atrophy was controlled, these results still remained significant but with a decrease in the statistical power, suggesting that the LFBF results are at least partly explained by the regional atrophy. In addition, we also found increased LFBF coherence in the bilateral cuneus, right lingual gyrus and left fusiform gyrus in the AD patients. These regions are consistent with previous findings of AD-related increased activation during cognitive tasks explained in terms of a compensatory-recruitment hypothesis. Finally, our study indicated that regional brain atrophy could be an important consideration in functional imaging studies of neurodegenerative diseases.
A self-tuning system based on application Profiling and Performance Analysis for optimizing Hadoop MapReduce cluster configuration
(2013)

One of the most widely used frameworks for programming MapReduce-based applications is Apache Hadoop. Despite its popularity, however, application developers face numerous challenges in using the Hadoop framework, which stem from them having to effectively manage the resources of a MapReduce cluster, and configuring the framework in a way that will optimize the performance and reliability of MapReduce applications running on it. This paper addresses these problems by presenting the Profiling and Performance Analysis-based System (PPABS) framework, which automates the tuning of Hadoop configuration settings based on deduced application performance requirements. The PPABS framework comprises two distinct phases called the Analyzer, which trains PPABS to form a set of equivalence classes of MapReduce applications for which the most appropriate Hadoop config- uration parameters that maximally improve performance for that class are determined, and the Recognizer, which classifies an incoming unknown job to one of these equivalence classes so that its Hadoop configuration parameters can be self-tuned. The key research contributions in the Analyzer phase includes modifications to the well-known k - means + + clustering and Simulated Annealing algorithms, which were required to adapt them to the MapReduce paradigm. The key contributions in the Recognizer phase includes an approach to classify an unknown, incoming job to one of the equivalence classes and a control strategy to self-tune the Hadoop cluster configuration parameters for that job. Experimental results comparing the performance improvements for three different classes of applications running on Hadoop clusters deployed on Amazon EC2 show promising results.
Hierarchical Learning in Stochastic Domains: Preliminary Results
(1993)

This paper presents the HDG learning algorithm, which uses a hierarchical decomposition of the state space to make learning to achieve goals more efficient with a small penalty in path quality. Special care must be taken when performing hierarchical planning and learning in stochastic domains, because macro-operators cannot be executed ballistically. The HDG algorithm, which is a descendent of Watkins’ Q-learning algorithm, is described here and preliminary empirical results are presented.
Social Security and Social Welfare Data Mining: An Overview
(2012)

The importance of social security and social welfare business has been increasingly recognized in more and more countries. It impinges on a large proportion of the population and affects government service policies and people's life quality. Typical welfare countries, such as Australia and Canada, have accumulated a huge amount of social security and social welfare data. Emerging business issues such as fraudulent outlays, and customer service and performance improvements challenge existing policies, as well as techniques and systems including data matching and business intelligence reporting systems. The need for a deep understanding of customers and customer-government interactions through advanced data analytics has been increasingly recognized by the community at large. So far, however, no substantial work on the mining of social security and social welfare data has been reported. For the first time in data mining and machine learning, and to the best of our knowledge, this paper draws a comprehensive overall picture and summarizes the corresponding techniques and illustrations to analyze social security/welfare data, namely, social security data mining (SSDM), based on a thorough review of a large number of related references from the past half century. In particular, we introduce an SSDM framework, including business and research issues, social security/welfare services and data, as well as challenges, goals, and tasks in mining social security/welfare data. A summary of SSDM case studies is also presented with substantial citations that direct readers to more specific techniques and practices about SSDM.
Record linkage software in the public domain: a comparison of Link Plus, The Link King, and a 'basic' deterministic algorithm
(2008)

The study objective was to compare the accuracy of a deterministic record linkage algorithm and two public domain software applications for record linkage (The Link King and Link Plus). The three algorithms were used to unduplicate an administrative database containing personal identifiers for over 500,000 clients. Subsequently, a random sample of linked records was submitted to four research staff for blinded clerical review. Using reviewers' decisions as the 'gold standard', sensitivity and positive predictive values (PPVs) were estimated. Optimally, sensitivity and PPVs in the mid 90s could be obtained from both The Link King and Link Plus. Sensitivity and PPVs using a basic deterministic algorithm were 79 and 98 per cent respectively. Thus the full feature set of The Link King makes it an attractive option for SAS users. Link Plus is a good choice for non-SAS users as long as necessary programming resources are available for processing record pairs identified by Link Plus.
Natural terrain classification using three-dimensional ladar data for ground robot mobility
(2006)

In recent years, much progress has been made in outdoor autonomo us navigation. However, safe navigation is still a daunting challenge in terrain containing vegetation. In this paper, we f ocus on the segmentation of ladar data into three classes using local three-dimensional point cloud statistics. The classes are: ”scatter” to represent porous volumes such as grass and tree canopy, ”linear” to capture thin objects like wires or tree branches, and finally ”surface” to capture solid objects like ground surface, rocks or large trunks. We present the details of the proposed method, and the modifications we made to implement it on-board an autonom ous ground vehicle for real-time data processing. Finally, we present results produced from different sta tionary laser sensors and from field tests using an unmanned ground vehicle.
On the selection of tags for tag clouds
(2011)

We examine the creation of a tag cloud for exploring and understanding a set of objects (e.g., web pages, documents). In the first part of our work, we present a formal system model for reasoning about tag clouds. We then present metrics that capture the structural properties of a tag cloud, and we briefly present a set of tag selection algorithms that are used in current sites (e.g., del.icio.us, Flickr, Technorati) or that have been described in recent work. In order to evaluate the results of these algorithms, we devise a novel synthetic user model. This user model is specifically tailored for tag cloud evaluation and assumes an "ideal" user. We evaluate the algorithms under this user model, as well as the model itself, using two datasets: CourseRank (a Stanford social tool containing information about courses) and del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site). The results yield insights as to when and why certain selection schemes work best.
Sneak-path constraints in memristor crossbar arrays
(2013)

In a memristor crossbar array, a memristor is positioned on each row-column intersection, and its resistance, low or high, represents two logical states. The state of every memristor can be sensed by the current flowing through the memristor. In this work, we study the sneak path problem in crossbars arrays, in which current can sneak through other cells, resulting in reading a wrong state of the memristor. Our main contributions are a new characterization of arrays free of sneak paths, and efficient methods to read the array cells while avoiding sneak paths. To each read method we match a constraint on the array content that guarantees sneak-path free readout, and calculate the resulting capacity.